[OSM-legal-talk] Question about copyrighted hiking routes in France

Pieren pieren3 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 21 12:22:54 GMT 2013


Hi all,

I'm submitting here a question about the legality of keeping French
long hiking routes called "GR" or "GRP" or "PR"  in OSM. All these
routes are very well known, have sign posts and references on the
ground, e.g. the "GR20" in Corsica (but many are still missing or very
incomplete in OSM). See these examples in [1a] and [1b]. These routes
have been created by the national hiking sport federation (FFRP,
Fédération Française de Randonnée Pédestre). You can see them on the
ground by the trail marks visible at regular intervals but also on
most of the commercial maps in France.

But we are facing two legal issues in France. The problems are not new
but become more critical in my opinion (see below).
First issue : it is the hiking route names themselves. For all of them
created by the FFRP, the names are registered trademarks and cannot be
used without permission (see question below). Second issue : the
routes themselves are copyrighted.
The list of trademarks is listed in the legal page of the FFRP web site([2]) :
- (some are just used in books or commercial maps but)
- GR®
- GR Pays®
- PR®
- "... à pied"
- "les environs de ... à pied"
- "Sentiers des patrimoines"
are very common (especially the first 3 : "GR", "GR Pays" (or "GRP")
and "PR" followed by a reference number.

Question : the FFRP itself is an editor of hiking bookguides or has
contracts with the IGN (the French state establishment for
geographical information) for publishing commercial hiking maps,
giving them royalties in return (an important income for the
federation). So the FFRP is always actively contacting or bringing
actions (sue) against private competitors or simple websites using
their trademarks and routes on maps or book editors not paying any
fees (see e.g. [3]). But some web sites seem to use them without fee
([4]). It seems that the FFRP is tolerating non-commercial use. Since
2009, 2 or 3 OSM contributors (including myself) tried to contact the
FFRP to get the permission they request to use their copyrighted route
names into OSM, wihout any reply until now. Earlier last year (Feb
2012), two members of the French local chapter met them physically and
presented OSM. They showed some interest but repeated again and
clearly that using the "GR", "PR", etc trademarks is not allowed
without permission, a permission they didn't provide during that
meeting (minutes available here [7]). They also didn't say anything
about the future. it seems finally that they are looking for a
replacement of their current map data provider (IGN) but they want to
preserve their current commercial model. Note that the sign-posts
(trail marks) are also protected (like a logo). After that meeting, we
are several people thinking that we have the remove all references of
the trademarks of the FFRP into OSM db, usually tagged in "name" or
"ref", either on ways or route relations or both. What's your opinion
?

Second issue : it is maybe a more specific French issue here because
the "routes" themselves can be copyrighted when they are considered as
"original work". A famous case confirmed this with the IGN (publishing
the FFRP maps) sueing a guidebook editor [5] and confirmed by the
highest court in France (1ere chambre de la cour de cassation de
Paris, decision of 30 june 1998 [8]. I don't know if this is the same
in other countries but a significant part of the OSM community in
France would consider deleting the FFRP hiking routes completely (and
not only the trademarks mentionned in Q1).

Personnaly, I think that a route is not considered as an "original
work" (or not enough original) in many jurisdictions. But still,
keeping them in OSM is raising a legal insecurity in all DB extracts
stored or distributed on French servers or applications. For these
reasons, all FFRP hiking routes (represented in OSM by relations of
type "route", "route=hiking") in France should be completely removed
from the OSM database. What do you think ?

Pieren

[1a] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/1107414
[1b] http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/2650826
[2] http://www.ffrandonnee.fr/_67/mentions-legales.aspx (in French)
[3] http://www.balades-pyrenees.com/numero_55.htm (in French)
[4] http://www.gr-infos.com/
[5] http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriJudi.do?oldAction=rechJuriJudi&idTexte=JURITEXT000006938477&fastReqId=330410198&fastPos=9
(in French)
[6] http://hiking.lonvia.de/fr/?zoom=13&lat=42.95532&lon=-0.61968
[7] http://listes.openstreetmap.fr/wws/arc/ca/2012-02/msg00000.html
(in French, require ML registration first)
[8] http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichJuriJudi.do?oldAction=rechJuriJudi&idTexte=JURITEXT000007041272&fastReqId=109256579&fastPos=1



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